Gentoo Offers PPC LiveCDs

drunkentiger writes "Ripped right off their homepage: In a recent Slashdot article, someone asked if it were possible to create a fully-featured bootable Linux LiveCD for the Macintosh. We thought this was a great idea. So today, we are releasing two full-featured LiveCDs for the PowerPC: one with KDE 3, and another with GNOME 2. Take a look at the KDE LiveCD running MacOS X in a window via Mac on Linux. LiveCDs can be downloaded here or from these mirrors."

Comments

Requirements?

[mrseigen]

I'm assuming I can boot this on my older PCI Mac (PowerWave 604/120, old mac clone). Does anyone know differently?

Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Davak]

I have heard the Apple vs PC discussion a lot; however, recently a *nix friend of mine was asking me if the apple or PC hardware was better for a new *nix installation.

I don't know... so now I ask you...

Which hardware would you rather buy for a new home linux system?

Thanks in advance...

Davak

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, well I'm going to answer this in two ways:

First, if your friend is just into *nix, then OSX is an option, without any Linux whatsoever.

Second, there is no reason whatsoever to pay the prices on Apple's hardware unless you plan on using Apple's software. Which isn't to say it's not worth paying for Apple's hardware, it just seems to be a strange choice, paying extra for a software/hardware bundle and not using the software.

So, in summary:

Get a clone if you want a cheap Linux box (do hardware research FIRST mind you).

Get a Mac if you want the best consumer Unix currently available and installing Linux is just an added bonus.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so true. I've a 550 TiBook & I'm full-time Linux(Gentoo). I understand that this combo isn't the most workable for everyone, but it kicks as for me.

A few points as to why:

I dig Linux and I dig learning about Linux, OSS, & friends. Linux on PPC is often more work, but you learn a great deal more than if you had simply point-click-installed Red Hat on your Intel. If you'd like to be a professional Red Hat reinstaller or an end user, don't go near PPC/Linux and stay well clear of PPC/Gentoo.

Sure, Gentoo's software build/installer is slower than grabbing the nearest RPM, but it near always just works! This is a bonus when I'd like to kick off a utility install while continuing to manage other work. The initial Gentoo install can be extremely time consuming, however later, when installing relatively small utils (tcpdump,ntop,etc.), not having to worry about the deps is... nice. .02 -

Anyone have a .torrent link?

[jdawg]

sure would make me happy.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[Verence]

gnome
kde

So much for Yellow Dog

[corebreech]

SuSE had a decent PPC distribution too. This seems like such a no-brainer... probably the only way you could expect widespread adoption from the Mac crowd.

Why Gentoo?

[Ost99]

LiveCDs are cool. I'm use Knoppix all the time (Linux bliss in the computer lab, finally).
But what is the logic behind using a source-based distribution for a LiveCD?

I don't have anything against Gentoo, but fail to see *why* Gentoo...
Is PPC support better with Gentoo? Or are the Gentoo guys just the first ones to do this for PPCs?

- Ost

Re:Why Gentoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same thing as Knoppix, X, GNOME, etc is already compiled and ready to go, cept these cds are based on Gentoo, instead of Debian.

Yes, they are the first ones to do this for PPC, afaik.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[carl67lp]

I'm a documentation editor for Gentoo, and I know first-hand that many, if not all, of the developers scour the Web (well, their favorite sites, like Slashdot, anyhow) and report back any news about Gentoo in the press. They gladly take the bad news with the good--using the bad, as in this case (the former lack of a PPC LiveCD) to retool things, add new features, and generally make people happier.

A lot of people scoff at the Gentoo fanatacism--including the developers--but at least, in this case, I think a lot of that is warranted. Perhaps not all of it, mind you, but definitely a lot. I think we're a good bunch of guys and gals.

Gentoo icon

[sdibb]

When are we gonna see a Gentoo icon for Slashdot, like the other Linux distros have?

Old powerpc's

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know if these will boot on a P40 (aka IBM 7020 (i think))? I just got one from my friend's dad's work and it has aix 4.3.3 but i really wanted to experiment with linux on it (seeing as i only have one other machine that i have had too many problems setting up (raid issues, and stubborness to only install sorcerer, lunar, sourcemage, and/or gentoo on it))

Distribution....

[fade]

This is a great idea. I was thinking of porting knoppix to the ppc for some time while my life dispatched the regular inerrupt requestors... and in the meantime somebody delivered pretty much exactly what I wanted. =)

those mirrors are getting slaughtered... would somebody (gentoo? gatech?) put up a bittorrent tracker for those iso's?

Linux boot problems on Macs.

[BrookHarty]

I tried playing around with yellow dog, but sometimes it would mess with my boot sequence, and I couldnt boot into OSX native mode.

This would be great, you dont have to touch the mac's boot sectors.

The perfect way to seduce my fiance....

[Rude Turnip]

into trying Linux, of course! She uses a blue/white Mac G3 400 with 256 megs of RAM and OS X 10.1. Doing anything on that computer feels incredibly slow, even after switching to the peppy (Mozilla based) Camino browser.

Has anyone tried this Gentoo liveCD on a similar Mac yet?

12" Powerbook here I come

[Zork the Almighty]

This just made Apple's 12" Powerbook one hell of a lot more tempting. I want one, but I don't have money to buy a bunch of software for it - at least, not after buying the Powerbook :) I run Gentoo Linux on my desktop at home. This would be totally awesome.

truth

[First_In_Hell]

Running games on Linux is exactly like one thing. Living in 97'. Looking at the blog boards and the rest of slashdot you would think that Linux ruled the universe of the OS. I think not. There are two things that drive a platform. Sex and Games.

Now the sex part is covered as web browsers, newsgroup readers, FTP services are pretty standard across the board now and provided the basic pud pulling requirement of any proper geek.

The one thing that's missing is games. Like, COME ON! Nobody don't gives a shit about MUDDING, or MOOing, or playing that linux port of Quake 3. When all the "new" full price linux titles are basically in the bargain bin at Kmart, being traded for a cold pint or used as coasters for sayd cold pint.

It's mind boggling. I watch these MORON's talk about running their GeForce 4 under linux, as do I (Dual boot Win2k and SUSE 8.0 beside the Xserve running right next to the Ultra Sparc 10). But you know what?

What the hell does it matter if your x Environment is refreshed with a GeForce 4. Realistically all that's needed is a crappy Rage Pro to do what needs to be done under x (KDE or GNOME). Even then the drivers they are running are voodoo3 drivers that have been tweaked a bit you're not squeezing a drop more out of the hardware except by the physical processor. It's like putting a porche engine into a Toyota Echo fer fuck'sake.

No wonder almost every linux bigot I know owns AT LEAST one console (N64, PS2), really now, if their OS had any balls it would be able to use the hardware properly and at least have more than the modern day equivalent of "pong" for something to do.

Because really now, who the hell really needs to play with Apache or Samba that much:

"OOOO , look...another webpage...OOOO ...look! I mapped a drive to the Sun server."

YaWN! You know why there are no games for linux, it's because their owners have no skill and much like the Acedemia that produced it, it continues to live in an unseen ivory tower.

Live CDs on CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to store a live CD (Knoppix/Gnoppix/Gentoo) on a CD-RW instead of a CD-R, and modify the distribution so that the CD-RW is mounted in R/W mode, allowing you to have some files that are persistent between sessions?

Re:Torrent files

[Jerm]

Uhh... you mean besides these? Currently getting 0.5M/sec using the 3.1a client

Here's nice one

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo Icon

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[deque_alpha]

I have been using gentoo 1.4rcX on my iBook for nearly a year now as well. It has been far and away my best experience in using Linux on the desktop, and I am slowly but surely turning into one of those freaky Gentoo zealots... Every machine that I run linux on (at home or work) are *slowly* getting Gentoo installed on them, but distcc is helping... ;)

Very funny, not very fair.

[MarcQuadra]

Really, I think that's true for most people on Slashdot in general. I myself always WANTED a 'cleaner' source-based distro without the hangups of Debian, and Gentoo provides it. It's very possible to achieve a stable and fast system with Gentoo, you just have to be moderate with your make.conf settings.

I think the BEST thing about gentoo is the installation process. I finally learned how daemons get started, how to set up networking and NFS. All these things were either hidden from me behind GUI utilities or prevented from working properly by services that I didn't know about on more 'turnkey' distros.

Mandrake is cool because a newbie can get it to work. Gentoo is cool because a newbie can become a knowledgeable user after a few installs.

Thanks to Gentoo I finally understand HOW all this *NIX stuff works under the hood and I am MUCH more competent on any *NIX box. I no longer cower in fear of the bash prompt, instead I command my boxen like a pro.

Also, I never liked the 'full-featured' desktops for linux that ship with RedHat or Mandrake. GNOME and KDE always felt slow and unfocused to me. With Gentoo it was amazingly simple to build a system with WindowMaker and the apps I needed without having the overhead of KDE/GNOME running behind it. When I boot up gentoo my RAM usage is 14MB, my 'barebones' mandrake box uses 72MB to get to "login:"

Re:Very funny, not very fair.

[xtrucial]

I don't have much to add, but... right on! I agree. While my Gentoo install was difficult, and I still have trouble (trying to get NTP running), I end up learning *a lot* about Linux/UNIX. And that's part of the process, isn't it? I mean, if I wanted something that "just works", I'd run OS X or whatever. But the thing is, I'm a geek, so I enjoy tinkering and understanding *how* computer stuff works; I'm not satisfied just knowing that it *does* work. Of course, all of this has practical application too: getting compensated in the work world for one's expert knowledge.

Re:DOH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah quik...
A firmware bootloader so evil that I still keep a small MacOS partition (copied from a boot disk) on my PowerMac.
That way if quik messes up I can still type 'bye' at the OpenFirmware prompt and get into at least one OS.

(I don't know why I don't just use BootX, after all the entire point of me installing quik was so I could get rid of my MacOS partition.)

And yes, System 7.5.3 has been released for free to the general public.
(System 7? OS 7? I can never keep track of when it stopped being 'System' and started being 'OS')

Forgot to mention. Wolfenstien Gentoo CD.

[TheWezzel]

I'm amazed that Gentoo Games was not mentioned they released Wolfenstien and have a bittorent to download it!

I think you should have prefaced your post

[bogie]

Basically your someone who actually wants to learn everything about how your particular distro works. This isn't applying to more and more linux users and certainly doesn't apply to the vast majority of Windows users.

Distros like Gentoo are a throwback and really are more useful as learning tools as opposed to useful OS's for normal people.

I of course have nothing against something like Gentoo let alone Slackware or Debian, but truthfully their way of doing things isn't the future of modern computing.

The future of computing is thankfully not having to worry about compiling kernels and screwing with drivers. The future is a OS that ANYONE can sit down at and be productive right away. Maybe tweakers will find that boring, but after security ease of use will continue to be the most important aspect to any OS.

Knowing how to build an engine and car from raw materials is a nice novelty for engineers, actually hoping in and driving it without having to have a PHD is the important part.

Like I said I have nothing against Gentoo, but spending all your time learning how an OS works is a fairly useless endevor for anyone but admins. Sure you need to know some things, but not to the extent which Gentoo requires. When OS's are mature enough enough to be secure by default, moron proof, and also efficient by default, there simply won't be any need for something like Gentoo.

[yawn....] Been there, done that.

[haaz]

Anyone remember LinuxPPC Live?

In 1998, our esteemed kernel hacker jcarr ( ;-> ) created a version of LinuxPPC Release 4 that would boot live from the CD. We gave away a few thousand at Macworld Expo, possibly a few at the first or second ALS. I don't remember if it made Slashdot, but we had enough stuff that did. Like the security contest Microsoft was putting on. At which we beat them.

(Our old Pmac 9500 stayed up despite intensive attacks, and finally fell to one clever person who exploited a vulnerability in the version of proftpd running on the box. Which became his.)

Bravo to Gentoo, but let us not forget, someone's done it before.